emies--nay, but to strike hard
back. It is not good to let the wrong-doer go free. They think the best
way to stop crime is to punish severely. Those are their acts; the Book,
they say, is their belief. Could they act one thing and believe another?
Truly, _are_ these their beliefs?

And, again, he would read how that riches are an offence to
righteousness: hardly shall a rich man enter into the kingdom of God. He
would read how the Teacher lived the life of the poorest among us, and
taught always that riches were to be avoided.

And then he would go forth and observe a people daily fighting and
struggling to add field to field, coin to coin, till death comes and
ends the fight. He would see everywhere wealth held in great estimation;
he would see the very children urged to do well, to make money, to
struggle, to rise in the world. He would see the lives of men who have
become rich held up as examples to be followed. He would see the
ministers who taught the Book with fair incomes ranking themselves, not
with the poor, but with the middle classes; he would see the dignitaries
of the Church--the men who lead the way to heaven--among the wealthy of
the land. And he would wonder. Is it true, he would say to himself, that
these people believe that riches are an evil thing? Whence, then, come
their acts, for their acts seem to show that they hold riches to be a
good thing? What is to be accepted as their belief: the Book they say
they believe, which condemns riches, or their acts, by which they show
that they hold that wealth is a good thing--ay, and if used according to
their ideas of right, a very good thing indeed?

So, it seemed to me, would a Burman be puzzled if he came to us to find
out our belief; and as the Burman's difficulty in England was, _mutatis
mutandis_, mine in Burma, I set to work to think the matter out. How
were the beliefs of a people to be known, and why should there be such
difficulties in the way? If I could understand how it was with us, it
might help me to know how it was with them.

And I have thought that the difficulty arises from the fact that there
are two ways of seeing a religion--from within and from without--and
that these are as different as can possibly be. It is because we forget
there are the two standpoints that we fall into error.

In every religion, to the believers in it, the crown and glory of their
creed is that it is a revelation of truth, a lifting of the veil, behind
which